


Still Bravely Singing

by Miko



Series: We Shall Keep The Faith [5]
Category: Captain America (Movies), The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Multiple Orgasms, Shower Sex, Virgin Steve, radiation exposure
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-03
Updated: 2015-05-03
Packaged: 2018-03-28 21:09:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,414
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3869881
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Miko/pseuds/Miko
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Natasha finds a lead that could gain them information about what HYDRA did to Bucky, Steve jumps at the chance to go with her. In the end they find quite a bit more than either of them expected.</p><p>This fic can stand alone if you're not interested in the rest of the series.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Still Bravely Singing

**Author's Note:**

> Minor spoilers for Age of Ultron from here onwards in the series, mostly to do with character development more than actual events.

Long experience and a practiced eye let Steve reconnoitre the situation with hardly more than a glance. As guard posts went, it was far from the most imposing thing he’d ever seen. The fence around the area was only waist high, and the barrier across the road was a simple bar. Two squat, utilitarian buildings sat just beyond the fence, which implied a decent number of guards stationed there, but the few he could see weren’t even carrying guns. There were signs everywhere, mostly in Cyrillic but a few in broken English, warning that the area inside was radioactive and quarantined.

The really incongruous thing, however, was the brightly painted bus with ‘Nuclear Tours’ splashed across the side in bold colours, sitting just outside the gate.

Steve was frustrated, exhausted, and badly jet-lagged. He’d spent the last two weeks chasing Bucky across South America, only to be pulled away by a cryptic string of texts from Natasha. She’d given him coordinates in Ukraine, told him to come in civvies, and insisted that it was important, but had then gone silent without providing any details. Now he was wondering if he’d even come to the correct location, because this certainly didn’t look like the sort of base she’d need his help to get into.

There was a group of people milling about near the bus, most of them dressed in what Steve had come to think of as ‘tourist gear’. Almost every one of them carried a camera, and those who didn’t had their cell phones out to take pictures with instead. A babble of languages reached him, rendered incomprehensible as everyone talked at once.

A shapely redhead separated from the rest of the crowd and headed towards him. Steve narrowed his eyes as he recognized Natasha, both relieved and aggravated at the sight of her. Relieved, because it meant he hadn’t somehow come to the wrong place despite the precise coordinates she’d sent him. Aggravated, because it meant he hadn’t somehow come to the wrong place, and that in turn meant _this_ was what she’d insisted was so important for him to see.

“You made it! I was starting to think the bus would leave without you.” She gave him a smile as brightly cheerful as her voice and reached out to hug his left arm, clinging to him like he’d seen women do with their best guys. She was dressed much like the other tourists, in the same outfit she’d told him to wear - jeans and a warm sweater. On her the jeans were skin-tight, and although Steve knew they probably had some stretch to them, it meant she wasn’t expecting to do much fighting. So again, why had she needed him?

“Please tell me you didn’t drag me half way around the world to go on a _tour_ ,” he demanded under his breath. Despite his words he did his best to look happy and excited, not wanting to blow whatever cover she was setting up. It would have been easier if the texts she’d sent him hadn’t been so damned cryptic, so he’d had some idea what to expect.

“Hey, the Chornobyl disaster is one of those really important moments of world history you missed out on,” she said, giving him her best innocent look. It was pretty convincing, unless you knew her as well as Steve did. He wasn’t sure ‘innocent’ was a word that had applied to her since she was a babe in diapers.

“Natasha...” Looking down at her, Steve worked his jaw in an effort to stop clenching his teeth. “I was right on his heels.” He didn’t want to be more explicit than that, not knowing who was listening, but he also knew she’d understand what he meant.

Her smile turned wry, with a hint of pity. “No, you were a week behind him,” she replied, sounding more like herself. “Which, admittedly, is the closest you’ve yet come, but it’s not like you were inches away. Sam’s still on the case, so it’s not like the trail is going to go cold while you’re here. If I’m right about what we’ll find here, it won’t bring you any closer to catching him, but it will get you a lot closer to _helping_ him.”

That caught Steve’s attention fast. Finding Bucky had been his personal mission pretty much since he’d gotten out of the hospital after the fall of SHIELD, but in the back of his mind he’d been more worried over the prospect of what he was going to do with his friend when he did catch up. God alone knew what HYDRA had done to Bucky over the decades, and Steve didn’t know where to start trying to undo it. If it even could be undone at all.

“What is it you think we’ll find here, exactly?” Steve looked again at the guard station and the warning signs. He’d heard of Chernobyl, though the way Natasha said it was slightly different - presumably the Russian pronunciation. The name had come up again and again when he’d been learning about the progress of nuclear science and what it could do, as an example of one of the worst disasters in nuclear history.

“I’ll give you all the details as soon as we’re not surrounded by tourists,” she assured him. 

“And whose fault is it we’re in a crowd?” He raised an eyebrow at her, and she shrugged.

“Since there is an easy and legitimate way to get inside, I thought it would probably be better to just use that rather than sneaking in.” She obviously caught the dubious look he gave the security of the area, because she grinned and punched him on the shoulder. “Yes, all right, it wouldn’t exactly be difficult. That doesn’t mean it’s a good idea. We’ve had enough bad press lately.”

That much was certainly true, and Steve had to admit she had a point. There was no reason to force their way in when they didn’t have to. “What do you want me to do?”

“Just play the part and enjoy the tour, and once we reach the reactor we can slip off for a few hours while our well bribed tour guide looks the other way.” Sliding her grip down his arm, she caught his hand with one of hers and tugged him towards the bus, giving him that innocent smile again. “You never know, you might even learn something.”

As they boarded the bus, the guide handed each tourist a small electronic device that clipped onto their belts or clothes. “Dosimeter,” Natasha told Steve when he gave her a questioning look. “Vintage Russian, from the looks of it, but it’ll do the job well enough. I imagine the tourists get a kick out of trying to find the hottest spots they’re allowed to get near. And it reassures them as they come out that they aren’t going to grow three arms or die of cancer tomorrow.”

“How much radiation is there? I assume they wouldn’t be letting any tourists in if there was real danger, but what are we actually talking about, here?” Radiation, much like computers, was one of those things Steve had learned about but didn’t really understand at a basic level. He did know that anything exposed to it could remain dangerous long after the source was gone, and that you wouldn’t necessarily know you’d been exposed to too much until it was already too late to do anything about it.

“Honestly? About as much as you get from space radiation in a couple of hours of flying in a jet, unless you go into the more restricted areas. Which, obviously, the tourists aren’t allowed into.” Natasha grinned. “Don’t worry. We may be going off the beaten path, but the dosimeters will warn us away from crossing over any of the worst places. There are hundreds of people living inside the Exclusion Zone - illegally, but they’re still there and doing just fine.”

Reassured, Steve glanced out the window as the bus started moving. Nothing looked any different on the far side of the gate; the plants seemed healthy enough to him, but what did he know? Botany wasn’t exactly his specialty, any more than nuclear physics was. 

The tour guide chattered away in English, Russian and a related language Steve assumed was Ukrainian, telling the story of the disaster and the aftermath. Most of it was the same information Steve had learned when catching up on his history after waking up in the modern world. The name of one of the nearby abandoned cities did catch his attention, though.

“Pripyat? I know that name,” he murmured to Natasha, frowning as he tried to recall where he’d heard it.

“Not surprising; the Pripyat Marshes just north of the city were some of the bloodiest battle grounds of World War II,” she told him. 

The mention of the marshes was what finally triggered the right memory. “There was a HYDRA base near here. I remember slogging through those damned marshes to get to this area without being caught by any patrols.”

Natasha laughed softly. “Well, we won’t have to do any slogging today. Another advantage to coming in with the tourists - we get to use the roads.”

The dosimeters everyone carried clicked a little louder as the bus approached the reactor site. The most notable feature in the area was the giant concrete building the guide referred to as the Sarcophagus, which had been built to encase the most radioactive area to keep the damage from spreading further. The bus stopped outside the fence, not getting too close, but everyone piled out to ‘ooh’ and ‘aah’ at it from a distance. Several people started moving around, holding out their dosimeters and trying to find the loudest spots, just as Natasha had predicted.

“Well, this is our stop,” Natasha said, making her way casually to the edge of the group. “Act natural. God, what am I saying, this is you I’m talking to. Lift your dosimeter; we’re just another couple of idiots trying to get as much radiation exposure as we can.” She giggled and wrapped her hand around his, simpering in a way that would have seemed over the top if he couldn’t see at least three other women doing exactly the same thing nearby.

Steve might have been irritated by her comment if he hadn’t also been grateful she’d realized the need to expand on her instructions. ‘Act natural’ was definitely one of those things that was easier said than done, at least for him. He lifted the device as ordered, and let her tug him along by the hand as they edged their way around to the other side of the bus. 

Once out of sight of the tour group, Natasha broke into a ground-eating jog and Steve fell into step beside her. Somewhat to his surprise, instead of circling around the fence to find a different way in to the reactor, they headed away from the area. 

“About two klicks from here is one of the first over-the-horizon radar arrays,” Natasha told him as they made their way through the forest. “They called it the Russian Woodpecker, because of the intermittent clicking it caused on short wave bands around the world. The Russian government refused to admit it existed, of course. It took them even longer to admit to the existence of the secret military base built into the ground beneath it. Rumours persisted for years that the base was the real source of the disaster, and the reactor was a cover-up.”

The terrain had changed since Steve had last been in the area, but not so much that he couldn’t do a rough triangulation. “That’s got to be near where the HYDRA base was.”

“Pretty sure it’s the same installation, taken over by the Russians after the war.” Natasha flashed him a quick grin. “And since I know for a fact it was run by the same part of the KGB that trained me, which in hindsight was almost certainly HYDRA...”

“Then it never really stopped being a HYDRA base at all.” Steve thought through the implications of that, and slowly a reluctant smile spread over his face as well. “So if this entire area was evacuated in a hurry because of the radiation...”

“The base probably was, too,” Natasha nodded, her eyes sparkling. “Abandoned in a rush, with no time to clear it out properly, and nobody’s been allowed back in since.”

“Which means there’s an unguarded location that potentially has records of everything HYDRA had done, at least in the area, up until the mid-eighties.” Steve shook his head, admiring. “I’m sorry I ever doubted you, Natasha.”

“So you should be,” she teased, but her expression sobered a moment later. “There’s no guarantee the someone wasn’t sent in later to clear it out in secret, mind. It’s just a chance, not a certainty. On the bright side, we already know the Winter Soldier was operating out of the Kiev area at one point, so there’s a chance he was actually stationed here. If so, his records would be here, as well.”

Unspoken was the further inference that the records might include everything that had been done to break Bucky and turn him into a weapon. Knowing what had been done back then would make it much easier to mitigate the damage now.

It didn’t take them long to cover the distance. The giant metal lattice-work of the radar array was visible long before they reached it, though as they approached Steve could see that the structure was rusted and beginning to crumble. The closer they got, the more it was clear to Steve that it _was_ the same location as the HYDRA facility he and the Commandos had raided so long before. He followed his memories to the secret entrance, which saved them hours of searching.

Unfortunately, it appeared there had been a few modifications to the area since the last time he’d been there. Steve hadn’t taken two steps into the clearing near the entrance before he heard a mechanical whine, like something powering up.

There was no time to warn Natasha; he grabbed her and hit the dirt, covering her with his body. Bullets sprayed the area where they’d just been standing, impacting in the dirt beyond them... and moving closer to them as the machine adjusted its aim to compensate for their movement. Steve rolled one way, and Natasha went the other, getting them both out of range just in time.

The hail of automatic machine gun fire stopped, the echoes ringing in the clearing. Steve crouched behind a large rock, and saw Natasha peering around a wide tree across the way. They both waited for a long minute, but nothing further happened.

Looking around, Steve found another rock that was about the size of his head. He tossed it into the clearing, and sure enough a rain of bullets followed its trajectory, blasting it to pieces when it came to land. This time he was able to get a look at the gun turret. 

“It’s got a three hundred and sixty degree range,” he called to Natasha. “No way to sneak up behind it.”

“What, you’re not just going to charge in there and destroy it? What kind of supersoldier are you?” she replied, her tone teasing. 

“Sorry, that’s what you get for telling me to leave the shield behind,” Steve retorted, unrepentant. “It’s the thing that’s bullet-proof, not me personally.”

“Well, thankfully my equipment isn’t anywhere near as obvious and recognizable as yours.” She pulled something out of the small pack she carried, and Steve saw the flash as one of her shock discs spun through the air.

He also saw the much bigger flash as the gun turret targeted and destroyed it. “Huh,” Natasha said, and she sounded reluctantly impressed. “I didn’t think it would hit something that small. No way that’s a human gunner, only a computer could track that.”

“Still a chance it’s uninhabited, then.” Steve was relieved. They were in no way equipped to go charging into a fully operational HYDRA base. If they encountered any further signs of resistance, they needed to get the hell out of there and come back later with reinforcements. But now that he was so close to a real possibility of helping Bucky, he didn’t want to give up without at least some fight.

“How many good sized rocks do you have over there?” he asked. 

“A dozen at least, and more if I go a little farther afield,” Natasha answered. “How’s that going to help? It’ll just blow the rocks up same as before.”

“That’s why you’re going to distract it with lots of rocks, and then I’m going to throw the one that wrecks it.” Steve hefted the largest rock he was certain he could throw that distance with any accuracy. With all his strength behind it, he was fairly sure he could at least damage the muzzle, or maybe rattle the targeting system into malfunctioning.

“On three,” he ordered. “One... two... three!”

Natasha had piled several rocks in front of her, and she threw them one after another with both hands, rapid fire. The gun turret spun back and forth, trying to shoot them all. Steve waited until it turned to track one Natasha had thrown to the far side, and launched his own missile straight at it.

There was a satisfying crunch, and a moment later the whole thing exploded as it tried to fire through a damaged muzzle.

“Good aim,” Natasha praised him. She threw one more rock just to be certain, and they both relaxed when nothing happened. Still, they approached the entrance cautiously, wary of further traps.

The door had rusted shut, and it took all of Steve’s strength and Natasha’s help to budge it the first inch. Once he could wedge his fingers into the crack, he was able to haul it the rest of the way open on his own, the screech of protesting metal ringing loudly in his ears.

Their dosimeters had been clicking more and more rapidly as they neared the base, but there was a marked increase as the door came open. Steve shot a look at Natasha, who was studying her device’s screen with a frown.

“We’re still good,” she declared after a moment. “It’s definitely a hot spot, I wouldn’t want to camp overnight, but a few hours won’t hurt us. Maybe there’s some truth to the rumours that unsanctioned nuclear experimentation was happening here, after all. I can’t think why the radiation would be higher _inside_ the bunker, otherwise.”

“Keep an eye on the readouts, you know how to interpret them better than I do,” Steve ordered her. “The information that could be in here is worth a fair bit of risk, but it won’t do Bucky or us any good if we die of radiation poisoning.”

She nodded and stepped inside, and he followed her cautiously. At least, with the door as damaged as it had been, they could be fairly certain there wouldn’t be anyone lying in wait for them inside. The air inside smelled musty, with a scent Steve associated with disuse and abandonment, but didn’t appear to be too stale.

To his surprise, lights began to turn on ahead of them as they followed the hallway. Many were burnt out, and others were flickering, but there was clearly still power coming from somewhere. “It wasn’t just the gun turret, this whole place is still operational. How is that even possible?”

“Another argument for there being a separate power source here,” Natasha said thoughtfully. “It must still be functional, but that’s a terrifying thought. A nuclear reactor operating for nearly thirty years with no supervision or maintenance? Let’s hope it’s a power reservoir or a generator they had in case of emergencies, instead. At least it means we’ll be able to access the computers, if any are still functioning. Try not to kick up the dust; if it gets into the air, we’ll have to put masks on.”

The insistent clicking of the dosimeters made it difficult for Steve to listen for any sounds of danger ahead, but as they progressed into the base they found no signs of recent occupation. The dust was undisturbed, with no footprints but the ones they put there. The outer areas appeared to be intended for habitation, mostly barracks with a few individual rooms, probably for the officers. There was a communal shower and privies, a mess hall, and what looked like it had probably been a recreation room next to a gym.

“Makes sense,” Natasha commented. “They’d want the living quarters as far from the experimental areas as possible, and they’d want _those_ under as much shielding as they could be, which means the centre of the compound. Tells us what direction to head in, anyway.”

The living areas began to give way to offices, and then to control rooms stuffed with computers and monitors. Unfortunately, while HYDRA obviously hadn’t had time to clear the base out properly, they’d still done their best at making certain nobody else could get at the information, either. The computers were smashed, wires and circuit boards spilling out everywhere.

“Damn it!” Steve told himself it was ridiculous to be disappointed and angry, when only a few hours ago he hadn’t even known this place existed. But Natasha had gotten his hopes up, even though she’d warned him it was only a possibility. It was the best lead he’d had so far.

“Don’t despair just yet,” Natasha said, pushing past him into the room and heading for the nearest computer. “We don’t really need a whole functioning computer, just a hard drive. I can MacGyver it to connect to my data pad. Let me see what I can find in here, you keep looking around.”

Trying not to get his hopes up again, Steve moved on to the next room. He poked through each room in turn, kicking down the doors when necessary, but each was the same as the last. He reached the end of that hall and turned to go back the other way, but stopped to check in with Natasha when he passed the first room.

“I think I’ve got something,” she told him, waving a square object he recognized from photos as a ‘floppy disk’. There was a large pile of them heaped beside her, and a smaller, much neater pile on the other side. As he came around to look over her shoulder, she slipped the disk into a contraption that had obviously been built on the spot and plugged into her data pad. 

“Most of this is data from the Woodpecker, not useful to us, but this one is labelled as a weapons project.” The document that appeared on her screen was written in Russian - no surprise there, and Steve knew the language well enough to read it, but not nearly as fast as Natasha was scrolling through it. Most of what he did catch meant nothing to him, equations and graphs and engineering specs, but she made a triumphant sound. “I’ve got it. This is info on the Winter Soldier program, and... he _was_ here.”

She paused in her scrolling, and looked up at him wide-eyed. “Steve, this is fantastic. According to this, Barnes wasn’t just here at some point, he was here _when_ the reactor blew. That means it’s not just the records; the _equipment_ they used on him might still be here. Even if they smashed it, Stark can almost certainly reverse engineer it, and that will tell us as much or more about what was done to him as any data could.”

“Son of a gun.” Steve felt his heart lift so fast it almost made him dizzy, and he laughed out loud from the sheer giddy relief of it. He had a place to start, now. He had a way to be able to help Bucky. “Pack those up, and let’s search for the equipment. What are we looking for?”

“I don’t know exactly... a cryo chamber of some kind, obviously, and from what I understand they did most of the programming as they brought him out of stasis, so anything around it could be what we need.”

“How are we going to carry it back over two kilometers of rough terrain? For that matter, aren’t the other tourists going to notice if we fill the bus with tech?” Steve had a feeling the guards at the gate weren’t likely to let them saunter back through with a load of equipment, especially since it might well be radioactive.

“We’ll have to call Stark in on it anyway,” Natasha pointed out. “If we find anything worth taking that we can’t just smuggle out ourselves, we’ll leave it and have him fly in and grab it at night. Hell, we might want to do that anyway, he’ll know better than we do what he needs to look at.”

“And then we just hope he doesn’t start an international incident in the process,” Steve said wryly, but she had a point. First he needed to find out if there was anything worth bringing Stark in for.

Not three rooms further down the hallway, they found something different. At the far end of another control room was a heavily reinforced door, with a wheel in the centre to open it like a submarine would have. The wheel wouldn’t move so much as an inch when Steve tried to turn it, but Natasha tapped his shoulder and pointed at a keypad nearby. 

“Increased security, that’s definitely promising. They might have needed the extra shielding to keep Barnes contained.” She stepped forward and scanned it with her wrist unit, then typed in the code that appeared. There was a heavy clunking sound from the door, and she gestured with a flourish for him to open it.

This time when he tried the wheel it resisted, but did move when he strained. Two full rotations got him another clunk, and he tugged hard to pull it open. It moved far more easily than he’d expected to, swinging wide and nearly knocking him over, and he realized why a moment later when the blast of air hit him from inside. The room within had been sealed and pressurized, and as it equalized with the outer area it blew a choking cloud of dust out as well.

And their dosimeters went abruptly off the scale.

“Close it!” Natasha shouted, her voice muffled as she brought her forearm up to cover her mouth and nose. “Close it, close it! Hold your breath, don’t inhale the dust!”

It was a little too late for that, but Steve obediently held his breath to prevent any more from entering his body. He slammed the door shut again and spun the wheel to secure it. Unfortunately the ventilation system didn’t appear to be functioning, and with no air flow in the room the dust continued to swirl around them.

Natasha tugged on his arm, and he ran out of the room hard on her heels. Once they were clear of the cloud she yanked two packets out of her bag, and tossed one of them to him. When Steve broke the plastic cover he found it was a thin mask, with a damp cloth folded inside. Seeing Natasha wipe the cloth over her face before sealing the mask in place, Steve quickly did the same.

Only when it was firmly fastened did he dare to inhale. The air he got tasted of chemicals from the wipe, but if there was any dust he couldn’t detect it. He expected Natasha to relax once they could breathe safely, but her shoulders were still tense.

“We’ve got to find water and sluice off,” she told him, still heading away from the dangerous area at a jog. “The dust itself is radioactive, we need to get it off us as fast as possible. If we’re lucky, the showers will still be functioning - and the water in them won’t be too badly contaminated.”

“And if we’re not lucky?” Steve asked uneasily. He didn’t like the grim look in her eyes at all, or the way the dosimeters were still beeping frantic warnings.

“Then we head outside and try to find a river to throw ourselves into, but god knows how long that will take.”

For once their luck was good, or at least not bad - Steve thought they might have just used up a month’s worth of bad luck in opening that room. They found one showerhead in the communal bathing room that was still operating... but only the one.

“You first,” he insisted, when she tried to gesture him into the spray. “I can take more damage than you can, so I can handle the increased exposure time.”

“You sure about that?” she shot back, one eyebrow raised. “The vita rays they used to stimulate your transformation were a form of radiation, Steve. SHIELD never tested what further extreme exposure might do to you. It could reactivate the serum and you’d end up like Schmidt or the Hulk, or it could reverse the effects completely.”

“Uh...” Steve felt a little sick. Neither prospect was appealing in the least, but there was no way in hell he was saving himself at the expense of Natasha. He’d seen the after effects of radiation poisoning several times now and it was a very ugly way to go. He had no idea exactly how much they’d just been exposed to, but Natasha’s reaction didn’t bode well.

“Go,” she said firmly, shoving at him. “Clothes and all, unless you want to leave here naked. The world can afford to lose the Black Widow, but it can’t lose Captain America. For one thing, Barnes needs you.” The attempt at emotional coercion wasn’t exactly subtle, but it was effective nonetheless.

Making up his mind, Steve grabbed her arm in turn and pulled her right under the water with him. “Together, or not at all,” he told her, adamant. “Maybe the world can afford to lose you, but I can’t.”

She blinked up at him, and he had a feeling she was as startled by his words as his actions. Steve smiled, though she wouldn’t see it through the mask. “You might have noticed, I’m a little short on people I trust these days. Anyway, what difference does it make, we’re fully clothed.”

“Rinsing the clothes is the first step,” she said, and as she peeled off her breathing mask he saw her answering smile had a teasing edge to it. “Once they’re soaked, we need to get them off and make sure nothing made it to our skin. Sure you don’t want to change your mind?”

Heat swept over Steve’s cheeks as he realized what she was saying, but he shook his head as he removed his own mask. “I’m not protecting my sense of propriety at the cost of your life, Natasha. We’ll just... turn our backs.”

And he would silently be thankful that the water was lukewarm at best. Natasha was a damned gorgeous dame, and while Steve had never allowed his awareness of that fact to interfere in his working relationship with her, he’d never had his willpower put to the test quite like this before. 

They’d danced around the attraction between them for years, and sometimes it seemed like she lived to tease him - her smug reaction to the effect that kiss on the escalator had on him was a prime example. But they’d never stepped over the line, or even really come close to it. Meaningless flirtation was one thing. Stripping in a shower with her was definitely on the wrong side of that line.

Resolutely Steve turned away, reaching for the hem of his sweater. That came off easily enough despite being water-logged, but the body armour he’d worn beneath it was another story. It was Stark tech, lightweight and flexible. It wasn’t enough to stop a bullet, but it could help deflect a blade and absorb a certain amount of blunt force. Worn under the tougher material of his uniform it was just a backup, but when Natasha had told him to come in civvies he’d still wanted some protection.

The problem was, it was skin tight and a bit of a struggle to get in and out of at the best of times. Soaked through, it proved even more of a challenge. He wrestled with it, cursing under his breath when it got stuck around his shoulders and threatened to tangle his arms, but finally managed to pull free and drop it on the floor.

Somewhat louder cursing came from behind him, most of it in Russian. “You okay?” he asked, concerned. Her answer was very definitely not repeatable in polite company, and he risked a quick glance over his shoulder, trying to keep his eyes high.

The problem was immediately obvious, because it was exactly the situation he himself had just escaped. It looked like the armour had jammed at her elbow, and twisted in such a way that she couldn’t get her arms back down to just try again.

Despite the dire situation, a chuckle escaped him. “Good to know you were at least somewhat prepared in case of a fight. Need a hand?” Undressing her himself wouldn’t just be crossing the line, it would be taking a giant leap over it, but he also couldn’t leave her stuck like that. She seemed to be quite thoroughly tangled in the wet material, worse than he had been.

“To my utter mortification, if we want to get out of here in time to catch up with the bus, the answer is yes,” she muttered through the fabric. “Either that or I need to cut it, but I can't reach any of my blades.”

“Here, let me.” Turning so he was facing her back, Steve caught the fabric and eased it upwards, tugging over the bend of her elbow where it had gotten stuck. The sound it made as it peeled off her wet skin made his breath catch, and it took everything he had to keep his gaze locked firmly on the wall over her shoulder. The glimpses of soft, pale skin he caught from the corner of his eyes set his heart racing, and heat pooled in his groin despite the cool water.

Once she was free, Natasha glanced back at him. When she saw where his gaze was fixed, she laughed. “I’m impressed. Not only are you not looking, I bet you didn’t even steal a glance. If I couldn’t see how fast the pulse in your throat is or the way you’re grinding your teeth, I might be insulted. Or assume I’ve been throwing the wrong gender at you as suggested dates.”

She was right about him grinding his teeth, he discovered when he had to unclench his jaw in order to answer. He glared down at her, eyes firmly on hers and not an inch lower. “I’m not going to take advantage of a life or death situation in order to... well, to take advantage of _you_. Looking would be just as disrespectful as touching.”

Her gaze softened, though her smirk remained sly. “You are so sweet sometimes it should be illegal. Thank you.”

He inclined his head in silent acknowledgement of the gratitude before he turned away again. He already knew she didn’t get a lot of that kind of respect. He’d seen it happen with Peggy, back in the war, and again now with Natasha. Too many men seemed to believe that if a woman wasn’t virtuous and demure it automatically meant she was fast and loose with her favours, and somehow that gave them the right to treat her like an object meant for their gratification. She didn’t say it often, but Steve knew Natasha appreciated that he’d never looked at her that way.

And that was exactly why it was so damned important that he not mess this up, regardless of what his body might think of the matter.

“I suppose it would be too much to ask you to wash my back.”

Steve froze with his hands on his fly. The words had been quiet and wistful, soft enough that he wasn’t sure he’d been meant to hear them. Even after working with him for so long, Natasha still sometimes forgot how acute his senses were.

Then again, sometimes she didn’t forget, and it might have been intended to let him pretend he hadn’t heard. Swallowing hard, he closed his eyes and fought with himself for a moment. It had been a long time since he’d even kissed a dame, not counting the once with her. Not seventy years, but too long. Serum or not, his body still had the same needs and urges it always had, and being a supersoldier hadn’t made it any easier for him to deal with them. 

“That depends,” he finally answered, voice hoarse. “On how exactly you want this to end. My willpower is _not_ limitless, Natasha.”

“Neither is mine,” she replied, and slid her hands down his back from shoulder to waist. The shock of her touch was electric, singing over his nerves and making him gasp. 

“What about Banner?” he asked, hanging on to his control by the barest thread. “I thought you and he...”

“Bruce had his chance. He missed it, and I learned my lesson. Again.” Natasha said. She leaned into him from behind, and he could feel the swell of her bare breasts rubbing against him, the stiff points of her nipples telling him either the water felt a lot colder to her, or she wanted him as bad as he wanted her. “But women have needs too, you know.”

The rational part of Steve’s mind wanted to object, to put the brakes on and figure out what the hell she thought she was doing. Why now, after all this time skirting the issue and treating it as nothing more than a game? What did she mean, she’d learned her lesson again? Did she really understand what this could do to him, to _them_?

Unfortunately, the rational part of Steve’s mind was currently very much in the minority, and the rest of him told it firmly to go to Hell. Natasha was a master manipulator. She could read people as easily as a newspaper, and there was no way she wasn’t aware of exactly what she was doing to him right now. Or of what the consequences might be.

Turning, he caught her by the hips and shoved her back against the tiled wall, mouth descending to devour hers. She met him eagerly, rising up on tiptoe as she slipped her arms over his shoulders, raking her nails down the muscles of his back. He hitched her up against him, and she caught on quickly, wrapping her legs around his waist and letting him support her weight.

He was more than strong enough to hold her with one hand, freeing the other to trail up over the soft skin and lithely toned muscles of her abdomen. She moaned against his mouth as he cupped her breast, catching the nipple in the cradle between his thumb and finger.

He gentled his touch, not wanting to forget his strength and hurt her, but she responded by biting his lower lip hard enough to cause a burst of pain. Groaning, he pushed her harder against the wall and pinched at her nipple, which made her rock her hips against him in turn.

This was about as far as his experience could take him, and most of that had been hurried moments with Peggy snatched between meetings and missions. Natasha was responsive enough that it wasn’t difficult to figure out what made her feel good, though. He lifted her higher, breaking the kiss to run his mouth down over the column of her throat, and then on to the sweet curve of her breast. She cried out when he bit down on her nipple, raking her nails over his back again and making him shudder.

Getting her jeans undone without dropping her proved to be a little more difficult, especially since he really didn’t want to lift his head to see what he was doing. She tasted too good, and the way she writhed against him as he nipped and licked her was intoxicating.

In the end he had to back off for a few moments, reluctantly, groaning as she fisted his hair and tugged in retaliation for stopping. “You want these pants off or not?” he demanded, and she gave a husky laugh.

“I was kind of trying to tempt you into just ripping them off, but I suppose that might make the trip back a little chilly.” Sighing, she let her legs slide off his hips and stood on her own. 

Getting the tight, wet jeans off proved to be as much of a struggle as the armour had, and Steve happily stepped in to help her. He knelt before her to peel the fabric down over her smooth legs, shivering as the heady scent of her arousal hit him. On impulse he leaned in to nip and lick at her inner thighs, feeling the muscles tense in reaction to his touch. She got her hands into his hair again, and the sharp tugging seemed to send sparks of pleasure shooting down his spine rather than pain.

She had to kick off her boots to remove the jeans completely, and Steve took the chance to move back to get his own pants off. The distance let some tiny vestige of sense creep back in, however, and he paused once more with his hands on his fly. “Natasha...”

“Don’t,” she insisted, putting her hands over his and pushing at his waistband. “Don’t analyze, don’t question, don’t worry. For god’s sake, don’t _stop_.”

Stronger men than Steve would have crumbled beneath the weight of that plea. And it was a plea, her tone shifting from scolding to something closer to begging by the end. He still didn’t know why she was doing this, but the waver in her voice told him this was something more than a game to her, and that was enough for the moment.

He let her push his pants down, and it was her turn to drop to her knees as he fisted his hands in her hair. She wasn’t content with just kissing his legs, though. She dragged his boxers down along with his jeans, and he only had a moment to feel the chill of the water on his heated flesh before her mouth replaced it, hotter still.

The room echoed with his shout, but he couldn’t feel embarrassed by the reaction, not when her clever tongue was seeking out every sensitive spot he had, and a few he hadn’t known about before. When she cupped his balls and tugged, he had to release her with one hand and reach blindly for the wall to keep his legs from giving out.

The available oxygen in the room seemed to have dropped suddenly, and Steve found himself gasping for breath. He’d have worried about the air going stale with no ventilation, except he was one hundred percent certain it was entirely due to Natasha. She was relentless, licking and sucking until he was dizzy with pleasure. 

Just as he was hazily debating whether he should force her away or accept the fact that he was going to come in her mouth, she backed off on her own. Steve groaned and his hand tightened in her hair, but she only smiled up at him despite what had to be a painful grip.

She flowed to her feet, her whole body rubbing against his as she rose. He caught her ass in both hands, squeezing as he lifted her the rest of the way up to align perfectly with him as he pushed her back against the wall once more. They both gasped as his cock rubbed against the folds of her entrance, and he could tell the slickness he found there had nothing to do with water.

Mindful of his size and strength, Steve pushed into her. He’d intended to go slow, but the tight heat of her body drove him half out of his mind and he thrust hard instead. The noise she made might have sounded anguished if she hadn’t also rolled her hips into him in a way that made it clear she wasn’t protesting.

That pretty much set the pace whether he liked it or not, fast and brutal with both of them clawing at each other and gasping with every thrust. Steve had never felt anything like it, and he could tell he was going to embarrass himself. He ground his teeth and fought for control, but then she pulled at his hair again and it sent him tumbling over the edge.

Natasha cried out as he emptied himself inside her, the sound equal parts smug and frustrated. It wasn’t difficult to guess what was causing either emotion. Overwhelmed by sensation, for a moment Steve had to pause, panting against her throat as he tried to gather his scattered wits.

“It’s okay,” Natasha murmured, and her hand in his hair was now stroking through the strands, almost petting him. “Steve, it’s okay.” Despite her soft words, her body was trembling against his, and he could hear the tension and disappointment in her voice.

“We ain't done yet,” he growled, and bit at the curve where her throat met her shoulder. Firming his grip on her, he rocked his hips again, a long, slow thrust that made him aware of every inch of her against him.

Moaning, Natasha arched her back against the wall. The move changed the angle so he couldn’t push as deeply into her, but the way she cried out as he thrust up again suggested it felt even better to her. “What... how...” She couldn’t seem to manage a coherent sentence.

“Not every side effect of the serum made it into the reports,” Steve told her, startling a laugh out of her. It turned quickly to another moan as he lifted his hand to her breast again, tugging and rolling her nipple.

With the worst of his need sated, Steve was able to take his time and truly revel in the way she felt against him. Not to mention the incredible noises he wrung out of her, each one louder and more desperate than the last. The more he felt her tensing against him, the slower he moved his hips, until her cries turned to curses and she bit at his throat in retaliation.

Orgasm seemed to catch her by surprise, and he saw from her reaction how it spilled through her body like a wave of intense pleasure. She tightened around him in the most amazing way, but this time he was able to hang on to his control and keep moving. She gasped and clawed at his back, protesting the continued stimulation. Nothing in her voice suggested she truly _wanted_ him to stop, so he grinned and ignored her.

By the time the second orgasm swept over her, she seemed to have forgotten English entirely and even her Russian was broken when she cursed at him for continuing. Swearing devolved quickly into incoherency, and when the third hit her she had been reduced to just sobbing for air and clutching at him like she might pass out otherwise.

He might have kept going, curious how many times he could get her off, but he was far from unaffected himself. The third time she squeezed around him he lost the battle with his self-control, and drove himself deep inside her once more before his world exploded.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Steve recovered first. Natasha was limp and panting, her head on his shoulder and arms draped loosely over his back. She shivered and moaned when he moved, but didn’t protest as he lifted her away from the wall and fully into his arms.

He had to carry her with one hand at her back and the other arm beneath her, as she was clearly too wiped out to keep her hold on his waist. They’d moved out from under the spray of the shower at some point, and it felt shockingly cold against the heat of his skin when Steve stepped back beneath it.

The water seemed to revive Natasha somewhat, and she squirmed free of his hold to put her feet on the ground. He still had to brace her with an arm around her waist for a moment, but truthfully he was grateful to be able to lean on her as well. He wasn’t entirely steady on his feet, either.

Without a word they washed each other off, as if afraid that breaking the silence would also mean shattering the fragile perfection of the moment. Steve ran his hands gently over the curves and planes of Natasha’s body, sluicing water over her since they didn’t have any cloths. He shuddered when she did the same for him, oversensitive but still enjoying the touch.

When they had no further excuse to stay under the water, Steve shut it off and they both stood there awkwardly. She did finally look up at him, and for once she wasn’t hiding behind layers of emotional masks. He felt like he could see right through to her soul, and what he saw was, unfortunately, partly regret. “Steve, I...”

“Don’t.” He stopped her with the same word she’d used on him earlier, and put a finger over her lips for a moment to seal it. “Don’t you dare say you’re sorry. Or that you wish you hadn’t done it,” he added when she opened her mouth to try again.

Nonplussed, she stared at him for a moment, then smiled ruefully. “What, we have sex and suddenly I’m an open book to you?”

“Only when you’re not trying to hide, and you aren’t right now,” he told her. He brushed a wet strand of hair off her cheek, tucking it carefully behind her ear. “It was fantastic, I don’t regret it, and you shouldn’t either.”

She looked away, though he thought she was embarrassed more by the way she was letting her real emotions show than by his words and touch. Even so, she didn’t close herself off again. Steve wondered if she was doing that intentionally, for his sake, or if she just wasn’t able to lie about this. Her openness now wasn’t the same as when she’d expressed her interest to Bruce, but it was more true emotion than she’d ever shown any of the other times she’d flirted with Steve.

Another thought stuck him, and he hesitated for a moment as his gut clenched. “Natasha? About not regretting it... is there any chance we’re going to later? Like, in about nine months?”

She froze - briefly enough that if he hadn’t been watching her so closely, he might have missed it. When she did start breathing again the rise and fall of her chest was jerky, like she was struggling with herself, and her emotional masks slammed abruptly back into place. “None whatsoever. I couldn’t do my job if I had to worry about that sort of thing.”

There were probably worse things that could happen than him getting Natasha knocked up in a moment of stupidity, but Steve couldn’t think of any. There was a part of him that felt a flash of disappointment, the ghost that still remained of the man he’d been and the life he’d wanted before he went into the ice, but he set it firmly aside. He’d faced down that regret and moved past it. He had other priorities now.

Why the question had upset _her_ was a mystery, though. 

“As I see it, we’ve got two options now.” Natasha turned to pick up her sweater, wringing it out as best she could. She was being very careful about not meeting his eyes as she fussed with it. “We can agree that it’s great we finally got it out of our systems, move on and look back on it fondly as a cherished memory some day, and not worry about it again.”

“Or?” Steve prompted when she didn’t continue. He followed her example and gathered up his clothes, but didn’t look away from her.

“Or we do the stupid thing and try to pretend it never happened, keep all the associated thoughts and feelings bottled up, and probably end up with a big blow out,” she continued. “Whether that blow out involves an argument or going at it again is debatable but not really important. Either way it will screw up our ability to work together, and the new team will suffer if their leaders can’t function as a unit.”

“How about the option where we don’t pretend it never happened, and also don’t pretend the attraction has magically vanished, and maybe get to do it again?” Steve caught her by the shoulder and used his other hand to tip her chin up, until she was forced to meet his eyes. 

To his surprise there was a sort of wary, wistful hope lurking there, almost but not quite buried beneath the cynicism he’d expected to see. It was definitely the cynic in her that answered his question, though. “That’s probably the worst idea yet. You want a girlfriend, Steve, and I want a lover. Those are mutually incompatible.”

Confused by the distinction, Steve frowned. He’d thought the two terms were pretty much the same in the modern world. “What’s the difference?”

“Commitment. Restrictions. Jealousy. Exclusivity.” She shrugged his hand off her shoulder and turned away again, bending to pull on her jeans. “I don’t do those things, and I won’t lie to you and pretend that I will. I respect you too much for that.”

“Why do this at all, then?” He felt like he needed to understand that much, at least. She was always an enigma to him, but they’d worked together for years without this happening despite the attraction between them. When Steve had seen the way she’d grown close to Bruce he’d been happy for both of them, especially with the way she was genuinely opening up around the other man. But he’d also assumed it meant any chance of something further happening between him and Natasha was gone.

“Is this a... what do they call it, a rebound kind of thing?” They hadn’t had a name for it in his time, but he’d seen it happen plenty. After someone lost their best guy or best girl, they’d turn to the next available person for comfort and reassurance of their own attractiveness. 

Hell, just about the only time dames had paid any attention to Steve before the serum was when Bucky had broken up with one and she thought having a fling with his best friend would make him feel bad about it. Steve had never been interested in taking them up on it, but that was back when he’d been determined to wait for the right partner. Besides, he’d barely known them. Natasha was someone he already cared about, and if this made her feel better about herself after Bruce left her, Steve didn’t mind.

“Maybe a little,” she admitted. “It was also a last straw kind of thing. The adrenalin from the life-or-death scare, the way you looked with the water sluicing over you... and what you said, about not disrespecting me by looking... I don’t know. That really got to me, for some reason.”

Struggling to get his jeans on as well, Steve processed that. That it was his respect for her boundaries that made her want to step across those very same lines... well, it drove home how badly other people had treated her all her life. Could he also respect the new boundaries she wanted to set around the possibility of something more between them?

“How about a compromise? Commitment, but no restrictions?” he finally suggested. “I can’t swear to no jealousy ever, but what you do when we’re not together is your business.”

“Could you really live with that?” This time she looked at him without any prompting, and her expression was sceptical. “Or are you just fooling yourself now and you’ll end up angry and resentful later? I don’t want this to screw things up between us, Steve. You’re too important to me for that.”

“You’re so sure I’m some kind of dyed in the wool romantic, but maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.” He gave her a sardonic look, a wry smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. “I’m not the same man I was seventy years ago, and I’m not looking for the same things out of life anymore. You want to know why I never went on any of those dates you kept trying to push me into? I wasn’t interested in what I knew they’d expect from me.” He’d lost his heart to Peggy, and he’d never gotten it back. Wasn’t sure he even wanted it back.

Catching Natasha’s hand in his, he tugged her towards him, and after a moment she let him pull her close. “I want you for who you are, I always have,” he told her, amusement fading. “I _respect_ you for who you are, Nat, and I don’t want to try to change you. If we can find comfort and pleasure in each other, what’s wrong with making that a long-term arrangement instead of a one-time fling?”

She wasn’t the only one with needs, after all. Not just the sexual kind either. Steve had come to terms with the fact that he’d lost his chance at a home and a family, but he still got lonely at times. It wouldn’t be a bad thing to have someone he could count on to be there for him when he did, someone he wouldn’t be leading on and who wouldn’t expect more of him than he was willing to give.

Having a chance to repeat this actually pretty damned amazing experience on a regular basis wouldn’t hurt, either.

For a long moment she stared at him, as if assessing his sincerity. Whatever she saw in his expression must have convinced her, because she reached up to catch the back of his neck and pull him down into a heated kiss. 

“All right,” she said when they had to break for air. “All right, you win. We’ll try it your way. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. Now, come on, we need to get out of here. We’ve been exposed to too much radiation as it is, and just because the levels are lower out here doesn’t mean it’s not still adding to the total. As soon as we get back to Kiev I’ll reach out to my contacts and make sure we get proper treatment.”

“What about the data and equipment?” Steve hated the idea of leaving it all behind after coming so close, but they didn’t dare go back into the inner areas.

“We’ll send Stark in after all, his suit will protect him,” Natasha replied. “If I’d realized how much of a hot spot this still is I’d have done that in the first place, but I didn’t want to involve him before confirming there was something worth the trouble.”

Walking in soggy boots was an even less pleasant experience than struggling into wet jeans had been, but it was hardly the first time Steve had gotten soaked on a mission. “What do we tell the others, that we jumped in a river after all?” he asked as they squelched their way out of the bathing area and through the halls.

“Hopefully by the time we hike back to the bus we’ll only be damp, but yeah, falling into something is our best cover if not,” Natasha agreed. “We’re going to get in so much shit from the guards, there’s no way we’re going to convince anyone we didn’t sneak off, but they’ll assume we did it to have sex. And hey, you won’t even have to lie about it. Good thing, since you can’t lie well enough to convince a five-year-old.”

Steve chuckled despite himself, shaking his head. Emerging into the bright sunlight from the dim, flickering light of the compound was a startling contrast, and Steve paused to let his eyes adjust.

In that moment when he couldn’t see much, he was paying more attention to what he could hear. And the sounds that reached him surprised him. “Do you hear that? Birdsong. There’s a lot of them out there. I’d have thought the animals would die out.”

“Actually, I read that the local flora and fauna are adapting much faster than researchers expected,” Natasha said, pausing beside him and tilting her head to listen as well. She smiled as another wave of chirping and singing ran through the treetops. “Nature prevails in the end. It always does.”

“Even in the worst parts of the war, when the guns went quiet you could hear the birds,” Steve remembered. “I think sometimes that was all that kept us going. The world couldn’t be all bad, if there was still something as beautiful as birdsong in it.”

Peggy had been that reminder for him more than once, as well. As always, Steve felt a twinge in his chest at the thought of her as she’d been back then, beautiful and strong and always the rock he could lean on. When he’d woken up in the future, he literally hadn’t known what he would do without her.

Glancing down at Natasha now, Steve felt the pain ease a little. Not vanish - it would never be gone completely. He would always cherish his love for Peggy and regret that they hadn’t been able to have a life together, nothing could ever change that. Accepting that he’d lost his chance for that might have been the hardest thing he’d ever done.

But the new life he was building was just as good in its own way. And if it could include Natasha as more than just a teammate, well, that would be even better. If she helped him remember to listen for the birds again, that would be enough for Steve.

**Author's Note:**

> I learned a lot researching Chernobyl for this fic - I was too young at the time it happened to really understand why the adults were all upset. There are indeed tours you can take into the Exclusion Zone, including tours of the Russian Woodpecker and 'secret' Chernobyl-2 base, as well as the abandoned cities of Pripyat and Chernobyl. It's haunting and tragic, but an important part of our history that should never be forgotten.


End file.
